Friday, September 14, 2012

Constant readers might recall that I once proposed that the OSR really needs to create a fanzine based on the "manly men" magazines of old. As soon as somebody gets that off the ground, somebody else needs to start publishing this pulp on a regular basis:

I know a few of the people participating in this documentary, all of whom expressed their enthusiasm for seeing this film made if only for the opportunity to finally allow for a fair-handed treatment of our favorite pastime, rather than one filled with histrionics, atypical gamers, or Mazes and Monsters.

The Kickstarter has four days to go and is around $15,000 away from funding. Look, read, watch, and if you think it's a good goal, kick a few bucks into the kitty and help it become a reality.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Allow me to preface this post by stating that I’m neither a
professional reviewer nor an obsessive scholar into the history of our favorite
pastime and, as such, this review of Jon Peterson’s Playing
at the World might contain errors easily avoided by those who are.
Nevertheless, Peterson was kind enough to provide me with a review copy of his
enormous text and I’m extremely thankful to have been given the opportunity to
read the book and post my impressions of it here.

For those readers who haven’t heard of the book via other
venues, allow me to introduce the book to you. Playing at the World is a
scholarly text that traces the origins of role-playing, specifically that of
Dungeon & Dragons. In varying detail, everything from the games of chance
of antiquity up to early computer role-playing games is given consideration,
but the primary emphasis of the book is the history of wargaming in its many
forms, culminating in the development, release, and response to Dungeons &
Dragons. Playing at the World runs nearly 700 pages in length, including an extensive
bibliography and index, bears copious footnotes, and features many photographs and
illustrations, some of which have never before been seen by the general gaming
public. It is available
through Amazon for $34.95 for the printed version and at $17.99 in the
Kindle format.

While attempts have been made to chronicle the history of
role-playing in the past with various degrees of success, Playing at the World
stands out amongst earlier efforts in its dedicated research of the written
historical record. Peterson states quite boldly in the Introduction that he
concentrated his research on contemporary written sources produced during the
time periods covered by the book rather than later interviews with the
principles from those periods. For myself, this is the book’s strength. As an
archivist, I know all too well the perils of relying on recollections of
witnesses long after events have occurred. Human memory becomes untrustworthy
with time and is susceptible to outside influences that can distort the remembrance
of events as they actually occurred.

I consider this decision to be the correct one when penning
a book like Playing at the World, but I know others will be less satisfied with
Peterson’s choice. Readers looking for juicy gossips and tales told out of
school by the principles (and about other principles) of the game’s development
will be disappointed. Many of the so-called great mysteries regarding the early
days of the game’s development remain unsolved simply because nobody commented
on them in a public forum during that time, leaving no written references to
draw from (which is also why they remain the great mysteries of old).

So if not a tell-all book, what is Playing at the World?
Essentially, Peterson proposes a very persuasive argument that Dungeons &
Dragons is not the product of a few isolated developments in America’s Mid-West
during the 1960s & ‘70s, but rather a culmination of a multitude of
influences extending back to at least the 18th century. These
influence happened to come together in a perfect storm roughly forty years ago,
but the creation of the game and role-playing as a whole does not rest solely
in the hands of Gygax and Arneson. Peterson also does an exception job of
arguing that, despite the prior existence of many of the elements that helped
birth D&D, the game could not have come into being at an earlier time than
it did. For myself, it’s this second argument that raises the book above other
attempts to document the game’s history.

Playing at the World begins with a rather forthright
examination of the history of role-playing in contemporary times, beginning
with the development of Avalon Hill’s Tactics game in 1954 and ending with the
release of D&D in 1974. Peterson covers the wargaming culture that existed
in America during this period, drawing on the many fanzines and professional
publications produced then to document the attitudes, feuds, games, and play
styles of the period, as well as the prominent wargame groups and societies
that helped influence and fuel the development of D&D.

Once 1974 arrives, however, Peterson pauses this
contemporary examination and takes the reader on a backwards jaunt through
time. While this jump is bound to frustrate the casual gamer looking to read
about the history of D&D, and by extension TSR Hobbies, it’s an important
one for more serious scholars—both those reading the book now and for future
researchers examining the history of the hobby.

Over the next three chapters, Playing at the World reviews the
history of fantasy literature and the role it plays in the default setting of
D&D, the lineage of wargames in history and how their systems for the
recreation and resolution of real events were considered, discarded, or adopted
into the mechanics of the game, and, lastly, the evolution of role-playing as a
learning tool and entertainment outlet, and why this is important in D&D’s
leap from being just another wargame into something entirely different.

Although the book’s middle three chapters will be slow-going
for some, I consider them the most important ones in the text. Peterson does a
superb job of establishing the social and political context in which
role-playing developed, something that is often overlooked by other attempts to
document the history of the game. In the future, when scholars find themselves
even further removed from the cultural atmosphere of the middle to late 20th
century, it will be all too easy to miss the impact these elements played on
society at large and the game in particular. Playing at the World’s chapters—especially
its coverage of fantasy literature boom of the 1960s and the insular and
argumentative science-fiction fan organizations of this period—will serve as an
important reminder of those influences.

Having documented this important ground, Peterson then picks
up the story of D&D once again and the role-playing titles that followed in
its wake, culminating the book with an examination of the early efforts to take
RPGs into the digital world.

Considering Peterson’s decision to cite the written
historical record in his research and the sources he cites in the bibliography,
I find that I simply cannot fathom the cost in both time and money he must have
accrued in writing the book. Allowing that the written record of this period
rests largely in small, amateur-produced fanzines and newsletters, many of
which with near microscopic print runs, Peterson nevertheless ran many of them
to ground in his research. Luckily for us, the reader, Playing at the World not
only gives us a glimpse into the contents of some of these rarities, but
Peterson also maintains a blog
where he posts images culled from his sources.

In the interest of fairness, I did come across two minor errors
in Peterson’s research, but both were inconsequential to the argument he
proposes and small faults are a given in a book of this length.

While I believe that we’ve yet to see the definitive book on
the history of role-playing (and concede that it’s likely we never will), Playing
at the World comes very near to being that book and will undoubtedly serve as
an important cornerstone for future attempts to document the story of Dungeon
& Dragons. I unhesitatingly recommend the book to any gamer with a devoted
interest in the history of wargames and role-playing games, but would dissuade
casual readers—especially those lacking any exposure with the hobby at all—from
choosing Playing at the World as an introduction into the sometime bizarre and
incomprehensible pastime of ours.

Monday, September 10, 2012

It’s safe to say that August 2012 won’t go down as a banner
month of posting here at the Society. Somehow, the entire last few weeks of
unofficial summer here in the Northern Hemisphere slipped by without much
activity around these parts. Such is the nature of blogging, especially when
you’ve been doing it for four years now.

This dearth of regular postings does not reflect a lack of
activity on my part, however. Quite frankly, I’m busier than ever writing,
designing, planning, scheduling, corresponding, and brainstorming on new
projects. If the OSR is in fact dead as the naysayers would have you believe,
somebody neglected to inform my inbox of that fact! I’d appreciate it if you
all kept it on the QT as well since I’m having a lot of fun keeping busy with
the work.

So, like a neglectful boyfriend, I find myself needing to
explain why I haven’t written you all lately. Hopefully, I haven’t damaged our
blogger-reader relationship irrevocably, even if I’ve been catting around with
other slutty projects on the side.

As long-time readers and fans of The Dungeon Alphabet undoubtedly
know, Goodman Games and I are deep in cahoots. The lion’s share of work that’s
been occupying my time has been for Joseph Goodman and the Dungeon Crawl
Classics RPG. My adventure “The Undulating Corruption” debuted in this year’s
Free RPG Day release from Goodman, but it’s not the first adventure I wrote for
the game. That honor belongs to Emirikol Was Framed! which should be on the
shelves of your finer FLGS either this month or next depending on when the
printer gets finished with it. I’ve seen the layout of the adventure, including
Doug Kovacs’ excellent maps and player handouts, and I’m mighty pleased how it’s
all turned out.

When I took the job of writing Emirikol, I knew I was
putting myself in the crosshairs. When you’re dealing with one of the iconic
images of the hobby, you’ve got to accept that people are going to have their
own expectations firmly in place before they even get a look at the damned
thing. Early speculation pegged it as a parody module, but it’s absolutely not.
It’s a solid, pulp sword & sorcery adventure, one where Conan or Fafhrd and
the Gray Mouser would be at home. My hope is that once people get a chance to
read it (or better yet, play it), Emirikol will be judged on its own merits.
Time will have to tell.

In addition to Emirikol, I’ve completed two more
adventures for DCC. One is The Sea Queen Escapes!, a nautical-themed
adventure with a deliciously evil twist for the judge to spring on his players.
The second is a more traditional “stop the evil brotherhood” dungeon crawl. I’m
not sure if I can make any formal announcement regarding its content or title,
but regular readers can probably speculate on its subject matter if you recall
what I’ve play-tested at conventions this year.

These two are not the end of my scribbling for DCC RPG
either. Contracts have been signed for at least two more adventures by yours
truly and they’ll take us safely into the heart of 2013. I’m also doing work
for a third-party DCC RPG release entitled Tales From the Fallen Empire to be
published by Chapter 13 Press. Suffice to say, if you enjoy my work and DCC
RPG, you’ll be a happy camper for the foreseeable future.

The DCC RPG stuff is in addition to two more books I’ve
written for Goodman (well, one and half, really). Next month sees the release
of the expanded version of The Dungeon Alphabet, available in both the regular
and limited-edition covers. The third printing is 33% larger than the original
and features new art in addition to eight more entries covering other classic
dungeon tropes we couldn’t squeeze into the original. I think “T is also for
Treasure Chests” is worth the price alone, especially when you see Holloway’s
accompanying illustration, but there’s plenty more to inspire in there as well.

The second book in the schedule is The Adventurers’ Almanac,
a title in the same vein as The Dungeon Alphabet. It’s not a “this is how you
do it” text, but one written to inspire the referee and get the creative juices
flowing. I had a lot of fun writing this one. A system-neutral supplement, The
Adventurer’s Almanac provides an entire year’s worth of adventure seeds,
monsters, interesting NPCs, magic items, weird events, strange celebrations,
and other juicy morsels to season your campaign world. It’s also a big book,
much larger than The Dungeon Alphabet, so you’re bound to find something in
there to suit your purposes. The release date is not yet set on the book, but
hopefully it’ll be available the first or second quarter of 2013.

As part of the grand plan to make DCC RPG your game of
choice in 2013, I’m going on the convention trail throughout the fall and
winter of this year and a lot of the next. I’ll be running play-tests, demo
sessions, and regular games at various locales along the East Coast (or as we
here call it, the “Right Coast”). The process of hammering out dates and appearances
is still ongoing, but there’s a better chance than usual I might be in your
neck of the woods in the months ahead if you rub shoulders with the Atlantic
Ocean. More on these appearances as things get finalized.

Putting my Goodman Games projects aside for now, I still
find I’ve got irons in the fire, on the anvil, or quenching in the bucket. As
mentioned previously, I wrote an urban fantasy game for Goblinoid Games and the
play-test period of that is at an end. No official word from Dan Proctor on it
yet, but if you’re a fan of Hellblazer, Clive Barker, or classic film-noir, I
encourage you to check this one out once it’s available.

I’ve not forgotten poor old Stonehell Dungeon either. I
recently squeaked past the halfway point on the manuscript (thirteen quadrants
are finished and there’s thirteen to go) and I’m desperately trying to ride the
downhill inertia to completion. For those of you playing along at home, this
means that Stonehell 2 is three quadrants larger than its predecessor. Even when
the manuscript is finished, there’s still a lot to be done (cartography,
editing, layout, and proofs) before it gets the green light for sale. I remain hopeful
that it gets completed this year, but it’ll be close.

I decided that I won’t be doing a Kickstarter for the book,
although that has been suggested. It’ll be in the same style as the original to
keep the aesthetics identical and the cost down. If you own the first book, you
know exactly what to expect. Perhaps, somewhere down the line, I’ll go back and
combine the two books into a prestige version, but that’s so far over the
horizon at this point you can barely even see it from space.

Finally, I’m writing my own role-playing game and expect to
have the first draft of the rules and setting completed in the next two months.
After that, I intend to spend a year in play-testing to make sure the wheels
don’t fall off before offering it up for public consumption. It is not a
retro-clone and it isn’t even a traditional fantasy game. Despite this, I’m
designing it with old school sensibilities in mind. My goal is to keep it
simple and flexible, and to leave as much agency in the referee’s hands as
possible when running it. I hope to have a formal announcement as well as a
design & promotion blog ready in October.

There’s more things going on, but I’ve already taxed your time
and interest enough with this post. Besides, I’ve got work to do. I’m eagerly
anticipating the fall months as they’re not only my most favorite time of the
year, but also my most productive. Hopefully, you’ll reap the benefits of that
intellectual harvest in the year ahead.

Who's to Blame

Despite having never been a professional adventurer, Michael Curtis has nonetheless deciphered cryptic writings, handled ancient maps and texts, ridden both a camel and an elephant, fallen off a mountain, participated in a mystical rite, and discovered the resting places of lost treasures. He can be contacted at poleandrope @ gmaildotcom